Rutgers plays its home games at the RAC; once a vaunted home court, but now, an out-dated, high school gym in which one cannot really imagine "big-time hoops" taking place. The university recruits NJ and New York; home to top basketball players, also the recruiting ground of the very teams it hopes to replace at the top of the league.
So what is the school to do? If Rutgers is serious about Big East basketball, and will not consider dropping down to a league like the A10 or the Patriot League, it needs to either step up and pay a big time coach to bring the program to the top, or put all its faith in Hill.
Whether the school and the state have the money to pay an experienced and successful coach or the state is as poor as it claims to be, it seems to be that RU won't pony up what it takes to pay a top-level coach.
Therefore, it seems that RU will always be hoping that the hot assistant will pan out. The school went that route in 2001 when it hired Gary Waters; the former head coach of Kent State, who took his Golden Flashes to the NCAAs, and led his team to an improbable win over Indiana in an opening round game.
At that time, Waters was as hot as any head coaching candidate in the country. However, his lack of NY/NJ recruiting relationships and determination with regards to recruiting of high school players, badly rounded out recruiting classes, and mismatched players that never seemed to fit his "system", led to his demise.
Enter Fred Hill Jr., son of RU's successful and legendary head baseball coach, it seemed RU made a superb hire. Here was a man with the one thing Waters lacked; NJ roots and local connections. His connections and relationships allowed him to land kids such as Corey Chandler, a Rivals.com four-star rated recruit, and RU's first McDonald's All-American; Michael Rosario.
As Rutgers fans learn more and more about Hill, his lack of head coaching experience is what is holding him back now. One can only hope for the sake of Hill and Rutgers University that Hill learns on the job in a similar fashion to RU's football coach Greg Schiano.
Firing Hill doesn't really make sense now. What would you do? Hire a temporary fix like Kansas State did with Bob Huggins? Get the one and done recruit, hope to find your way into national prominence and then fade to oblivion when the Bob-Huggins-type leaves for greener pastures?
Or, do you look for an assistant that seems to be leading a mid-major in the right direction? Do you start over, yet again?
At the very least, this is Hill's dream job and he actually wants to be here. Those are two things we cannot be sure any other coach feels about the State University of New Jersey. We must be the two things we don't want to be: patient, and hopeful.
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